The pandemic has not only revealed the healthcare access to millions of people in India but also the windows it opened for the rich while closing it shut on the faces of the poor.
According to a report by the United Kingdom-based non-profit organization, Oxfam, the lockdown resulted in the country’s billionaire becoming 35% richer as the poor got further drenched in poverty.
The coronavirus induced pandemic cast a shadow over the already low incomes of the middle-class Indians as lakhs lost their jobs. It is estimated that nearly 1.7 lakh people got robbed of their jobs every hour just in April 2020, forcing millions to hunt for alternate ways to earn their bread and butter to survive.
The existing inequalities in the country have only risen as the income gap between the rich and poor has seen its biggest expansion in history. The majority of the unskilled workers do not even have access to basic healthcare and sanitization as they have been unemployed for a long.
The report to be presented in Switzerland’s Davos at the World Economic Forum puts light on the wealth acquired by the super-rich of India, pushing the poor further down into the poverty tunnel.
‘The Inequality Virus’ speaks about how 84% of households got affected by the pandemic through income losses while the rich continued to overfill their banks with 35% more money.
The report disclosed that since the beginning of the pandemic, the wealth fetched by the top 100 billionaires alone of India could give a cheque of Rs. 94, 045 to each of the 138 million poor people who were hit the most by the lockdown.
“The rising inequality in the country is poignant… it would take an unskilled worker 10,000 years to make what (Reliance Industries’ Chairman Mukesh Ambani) made in an hour during the pandemic… and three years to make what Ambani made in a second,” the report said.
The owner of the Reliance Group, Mr. Ambani, became the 4th richest man on Earth in August 2020.
Since the lockdown was enforced in March 2020, the world witnessed lakhs of migrants walking barefoot to their native places, many of which were thousands of kilometers away because of the announcement of a lockdown that had almost no prior warning.
Hunger-stricken and penniless, these workers walked tirelessly to their villages in hopes of survival. Not all reached their home after all as hundreds (probably thousands) lost their lives during the journey due to starvation, road accidents, health deterioration, and others.
The Centre said it does not have any official number or data pertaining to these deaths, bringing a wave of shock in the country and drawing tons of criticism from the opposition. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a sharp dig at the government as he said on Twitter in September, “The sad part is the government does not care about the loss of lives. The world saw them dying….”
With the lockdown showing its evident ill effects, the central government in 2020 announced an economic relief package amounting to Rs. 20 lakh crores. The Pm called as a step towards an “Atma-Nirbhar Bharat”, his vision for a self-reliant India.
However, notably, Oxfam found that the “direct fiscal impact” of this package was only “a little more than INR 2 lakh crore, or a mere one percent of GDP”, as it included increasing FDI in the defense department and opened space exploration to the private sector.
The group’s report also stated that the budget of the Jan Aushadhi scheme- that allows medicines to be available at an affordable rate- could be increased by a whopping 14 times if the top 11 billionaires of the country were made to give one percent of the profits, they earned in the pandemic, as tax.
Furthermore, it stressed the loss of healthcare access to millions here as the covid-19 guidelines is almost impossible to be followed in households that are either comprised of a single room or 2 rooms. It said social distancing and handwashing were “a luxury when 32 percent and 30 percent of households live in one room and two-room houses, respectively, in urban India”.
This isn’t just the scenario in India as the world is facing a similar situation on the income front as the inequalities in incomes are increasing at an alarming rate.
“Worldwide, billionaires’ wealth increased by a staggering $3.9 trillion between March 18 and December 31, 2020… at the same time it is estimated that the total number of people living in poverty could have increased by between 200 million and 500 million,” the global report said.
The Oxfam’s report highlighted that the income generated by the world’s 10 richest billionaires only during the pandemic time is “more than enough to prevent anyone on Earth from falling into poverty because of the virus, and to pay for a COVID-19 vaccine for everyone”.
As such, the group has suggested the Indian government look into these issues with advice to review the minimum wages immediately and improve the same regularly.
Oxfam also urged the Centre to levy a 2% tax on people earning over Rs. 50 lakhs and launch a temporary tax model on firms earning massive profits in the pandemic era.
“It is time for the Government of India to take specific and concrete actions to build a better future… citizens’ voices seek a more equal and just future,” the report said
